Edward Vielmetti

Links: Chinese New Year links

For Chinese New Year coming up on Feb. 14, here is a list of links - certain to be incomplete - of area organizations serving the Chinese community.

Saturday morning on Ann Arbor's North Fourth Avenue

The neighborhood that I don't live in but that I feel a part of is North Fourth Avenue, the shopping area that includes and overlaps with the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, Kerrytown, and Braun Court. It's part of our weekly routine, full of people that we meet while we're walking down the street every week with a bag or two of groceries.

With Video: Ann Arbor sees urgent need for pedestrian signal on Huron at YMCA but has no money

The City of Ann Arbor would like to install a pedestrian-activated traffic crosswalk signal on Huron Street to allow safer access across the street for patrons of the YMCA, but there's no money in the budget at the moment.

The proposed City of Ann Arbor draft Capital Improvements Plan for fiscal year 2011 to 2016 has an unfunded urgent priority $100,000 project for 2012 for a HAWK ("High intensity Activated crossWalK") signal at the intersection of Huron with Third and Chapin streets. Besides safer access to the Y, the signal would improve safety for pedestrians going to and from Lurie Terrace.

Links: A requiem for Arbor Update's six-year run online

The long running local commentary weblog Arbor Update is shutting down. One of the features it has had is a sidebar of "other local bloggers."  This week's link roundup captures that list before it's frozen in amber, and notes what the Arbor Update crew is moving on to do.

One of the things clear from reviewing this list is that AU's run from 2004 to 2010 is remarkable. The typical weblog doesn't last all that long before the author moves on to the next thing. Here's what Arbor Update used to pay attention to, back in its heyday.

FOIA Friday: Ask again after your appeal is denied

(Frogger | Wikimedia Commons)

Links: Newsstand review: Ypsilanti publications, legal news, beer

A roundup of free publications collected from newsstands around the area. This week's collection includes a few that are new to me, including several Ypsilanti-area publications I picked up on last week's trip to Ypsi for lunch, and a few weeks worth of back issues of the Washtenaw County Legal News.

Seventh and Washington pedestrian refuge signs flattened 10 times in 4 months

A report compiled by the City of Ann Arbor and returned in response to a FOIA request shows that the keep-right sign and the in-street pedestrian crossing sign at the corner of West Washington Street and South Seventh Street, which were installed for the first time on Oct. 8, 2009, have been reinstalled due to accidents 10 times since then.

Weblogs from the University of Michigan: ancient maps, modern Catholics, the Middle East and much more

A 2009 Michigan Daily story, reprinted here by the Center for Entrepreneurship, notes the use by faculty of the weblog form to engage in teaching, research, and scholarship These blogs take the form of class blogs, where students are assigned to write on topics relevant to the course; news clipping blogs, where a researcher will follow the scholarship and new papers in his or her field by republishing and noting them in blog format, or the occasional original blog, where the writer gains a wide audience.

Here is but a small slice of the blogging going on at the University of Michigan. Like all on-campus activities, this is wildly decentralized, with no central authority atop the Fleming Building dictating form, style, or system use. There's enough to follow along to audit classes from afar, to track current scholarship in a field, or to watch a new student intern discover on-campus resources in the course of his introduction to campus.

Long running ArborUpdate local news weblog shutting down

The editorial collective that edits ArborUpdate has decided to shut down operations. citing the growth of other forums for community discussion and a narrowing of the focus. From the farewell notice:

After years of updating, the ArborUpdate crew is taking a break. It may be temporary, it may be permanent, but for now the ArborUpdate sign is flipped to “closed.”

ArborUpdate.com was a volunteer-run news and discussion site for the Ann Arbor community which started in 2004. It continued the work of Rob Goodspeed, whose Goodspeed Update served as a news blog covering the University of Michigan and was rated 2004 Michigan Daily best blog.

Links: Harry Potter conference, passenger pigeons, and bus rerouting

In the links today: a Harry Potter conference at Eastern Michigan University in March, archives of the history of the passenger pigeon at the Bentley Historical Library, and changes to an AATA bus route are welcomed by the Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living.

Links: Macmillan imprints disappear from Amazon, then reappear in dispute over electronic book pricing

Late on Friday, alert readers noticed that all books published by Macmillan disappeared from sale without notice from the Amazon.com online bookstore. Speculation as to the cause started immediately, with questions whether this was a technical glitch or something else. The New York Times quoted an unattributed source late Friday stating that this was the result of a pricing dispute between Amazon and Macmillan, and this was confirmed by a Saturday morning open letter from Macmillan publisher John Sargent. By Sunday, Amazon had backed down, finally issuing an unsigned official communique explaining the situation and indicating that it would return the Macmillan books to its online catalog.

Today's links chronicle the situation as it played out to date, showing how Macmillan and its authors took the upper hand in crisis communications by being open and forthright about their motives. In comparison, most of Amazon's visible commentary on the issue came from customer service representatives and comment board moderators who were not as well spoken and who did not always have either first or last names.

Edward Vielmetti - Our Neighborhoods

Places to have a meeting in the Ann Arbor area

The City of Ann Arbor is entertaining proposals from developers for a conference and convention center hotel to be located on the Library Lot, next to the downtown branch of the Ann Arbor District Library. But what if you have a meeting that you want to hold before construction is complete, and you can't wait?

There are lots of places for meetings in the area. Here's a guide to some of the locations you might consider.

And now the news from Ypsilanti: delicious soup, troublesome budgets, overflowing trash

Even though there's a four lane freeway dividing the two cities, Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti are closely tied. The writing from bloggers in Ypsi seems to this Ann Arbor resident to be more down to earth, and you can get a view of what is going on filtered through the eyes of someone who has been in the area for a long time who appreciates both the city's historic character and its post-industrial challenges.

Here's a roundup of some of what's going on from an Ypsilanti point of view from Mark Maynard, Brian Robb, Steve Pierce, and Bee Mayhew, and a missing newsfeed from downtown Ypsilanti business incubator SPARK East.

FOIA Friday: Dealing with FOIA abuse and restrictions on FOIA access

If you are a municipal administrator, you may be responsible for responding to citizen FOIA requests. Generally this is a routine matter, but at times there may be a political conflict that causes someone to use the Michigan Freedom of Information Act laws as a weapon to harass, bully, hector or intimidate you or your staff with overly frequent, poorly written, and badly timed FOIA efforts.

Or, perhaps, a citizen is trying to find something out, is frustrated with the municipal response and escalates his FOIA efforts until the two sides reach the point where they need to go to court to sort it out.

Here's a review of two cases in Michigan where city officials have dealt with this problem, and some of the solutions they have tried to put into place. It also includes suggestions for how to avoid the appearance that you, the upstanding and righteous citizen, are one of those people who abuse the system.

This column is part of the weekly FOIA Friday series.

Newsstand review: iPad, Toyota recall, Shakespearean Robert Bobb

On Thursdays I'm writing a newsstand review of publications - quarterly, seasonal, monthly, weekly, and daily - that are available on newsstands and in places of free distribution in Ann Arbor. Free does not necessarily mean free for everyone; this week's roundup includes the Wall Street Journal, which you can pick up free at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business if you manage to pass as a student or faculty or (better yet) prospective donor.

This week's collection also includes the Michigan Daily, University Record, Ann Arbor Journal, Consider, Dividend, Detroit Metro Times, Real Detroit, and the Monroe Street Journal.